<p>I'm a rising senior applying to colleges, and it's likely that I'm going to major in at least one of math, physics, and CS. (I'll be applying to L&S CS.)</p>
<p>1) Are CS classes and students really as competitive (as opposed to cooperative) as I hear they are? Are students more likely to work/study in groups or alone in CS?</p>
<p>2) On a related note, how are grade distributions in math, physics, and CS courses? CS seems to have a reputation for harsh curves.</p>
<p>3) Are research opportunities and internships plentiful for the subjects I listed? Are they usually restricted to juniors or seniors, or do underclassmen participate as well? I know that being close to Silicon Valley comes with a lot of opportunities for CS majors, but what about math and physics opportunities at/around Berkeley? I'm well aware that research usually comes from scouting out a bunch of professors, but is it common to participate in research?</p>
<p>2) Physics lower division classes tend to be graded fairly easily; in Physics 7A and 7B my classes had something like 25% A’s, 40% B’s, 30% C’s, 5% other, resulting in a B average. Math classes are slightly less generous in my experience, but Math 53 and 54 had roughly 20% A’s I think, with a B- average. My CS friends say that CS classes have a B- average as well. </p>
<p>3) A couple of my close friends are physics majors, and they had no trouble getting research as freshmen. I don’t know any CS friends that are into research yet, but they all found internships pretty easily.</p>
<p>For CS-</p>
<p>1) No. I have met a ton of really cooperative people in CS and have not found anybody who is against helping or being helped by others. The few people who are like that will probably fail out anyways, because at some point, you are going to need someone’s help. Students seem to be very friendly, though not always outgoing.</p>
<p>2) Grades are curved. If they are not curved, then that just means that the class will be really, really tough. In the lower divs, they constantly tell you, “this is NOT a weed-out class” but nobody really buys it. But don’t be intimidated by it. If you put in the work, you can get A’s</p>
<p>3) YES! I feel like a celebrity as a Cal EECS major. Everybody wants us.</p>
<p>Actually, some of the CS 61 courses are not curved, according to the archived home pages.</p>
<p>[CS</a> 61A Home Page](<a href=“http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp11/]CS”>CS 61A Home Page)
[CS</a> 61BL: Data Structures](<a href=“http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61bl/sp11/]CS”>http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61bl/sp11/)</p>
<p>Regarding grade distributions, here is a [report</a> from 1999 about grade distributions in EE and CS courses](<a href=“http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/report/index.html]report”>Grade Distributions for EECS and LSCS Students). Note that there has been some general grade inflation at Berkeley since then, and the [guidelines</a> for grading from the 1970s and 1980s](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml]guidelines”>Grading Guidelines for Undergraduate Courses | EECS at UC Berkeley) do not seem to reflect this reality (or even 1999 reality, although be careful about interpreting L&S CS students’ grade averages from then, since L&S CS was a capped major then).</p>
<p>1) Most CS work is actually done in groups. You pretty much always have a partner for lab work and discussion in section, and many of the projects (across all the 61 series) are also partner/group based projects. The homework and exams for CS are probably the only parts of the class that don’t involve group work (except for some parts in 61A). Most students like myself do team up and are friendly/cooperative with each other.</p>
<p>2) Not sure, but that stuff can be checked at courserank.com</p>
<p>3) From what I understand, freshmen and sophomores who just started learning CS in college will probably have to take a few upper division classes first before being enlisted for research/internships (though there are exceptions if you are very talented, like a few of my friends who live and breathe CS lol). Mostly upperclassmen get the positions, but that’s not to say that underclassmen get nothing. Not sure about physics/math though.</p>
<p>In general, all your questions have been answered, but I’d like to add that the Berkeley CS dept/program is great here. I feel like the curriculum is well-organized and really teaches students what they ought to know (at least in the CS dept, other subjects’ mileage may vary). I got a bunch of internship offers for the summer and fall after just taking the CS61 series.</p>
<p>It’s competitive, and you may feel bad after an exam or project is graded, but what you learn > what grade you get.</p>